The present disclosure describes systems and techniques relating to power line communications (PLC) systems and apparatus.
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Standard 1901-2010 has been proposed for broadband communications over power line networks. IEEE Std. 1901™-2010 describes Media Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications to provide a flexible architecture supporting integrated access, Smart Grid, building, in-home, and transportation platforms (vehicle) applications. This standard includes description of transmit power control (TPC) to support regulatory requirements and to reduce interference with external communications technologies and with other basic service sets (BSSs) on the same power lines. The TPC service provides, in part, adaptation of transmit power based on a range of information, including path loss and link margin estimates.
Other standards include ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union's Telecommunication standardization sector) G.hn, HPAV (HomePlug AV), and HPAV2. In typical implementations of the broadband PLC standards, the analog front end (AFE) is dimensioned to pass several hundreds of Mbits/s, e.g., using 4096 QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), which typically requires at least 40 dB SNDR (Signal to Noise and Distortion Ratio) using BW (bandwidth) of greater than 50 MHz or less for HPAV. In other words, prior PLC AFEs are specified and designed for supporting the maximum performance of the system in terms of data rate.